Subject: Peacocke Recipes

From: dom@tallis (Dominic Varley)
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 13:23:38 GMT

Hi,

I'm looking for some peacocke recipes.  They don't look too disimilar to
turkeys for my money and I'm really curious to know how they would be prepared
and what they would taste like.  Plus they're sending us all here at work 
absolutley crazy, screaming their heads off all day long :-)  Let's say it
would bring some light relief to know how one might be cooked up.

Thanks,
	dom.

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From: [email-masked] (Stephen Bloch)
Date: 19 Jun 1994 16:37:21 -0400

In article <7718594188499@tallis>, Dominic Varley <dom@tallis> wrote:
>I'm looking for some peacocke recipes.... they're sending us all here at work 

The following appears on p. 109 of the Prospect Books hardback edition of
Constance Hieatt's _An Ordinance of Pottage_, 1988, ISBN 0 907325 38 6.

Pekok rostyd
Breke the necke by the hed; kepe the scken hoole.  Put a pyn thorwgh the
sckyn of the necke; blowe hyym that the sckyn aryse fro the flesche.  Fle
of the sckyn with the federys; kepe it hole.  Draw the pekok.  Lat the
legges ley over & the bon off the necke.  Stuff hym withyn with powderys &
salt.  Do hym on a broche: trusse the feet toward the body as he was wonthe
to sytthe on the perche, & sett the necke above the spethe.  & in the same
maner rost hym & bast hym [with] wyn, powders, & salt.  When he is rostyd
take hym off, & when he is somdell cold set the sakyn upon hym & sow hym,
or prykke it to the body, & sett hym on a tarage & sprede the tayle abrode,
& serve hym fort as he war a quyk pekok.

Vocabulary: broche = spit, tarage = round shield, quyk = quick = live.
The rest is essentially modern English with typically variable 15th-century
spelling; read it aloud and listen to yourself.

A health warning: This recipe seems to call for putting raw skin back onto
a cooked fowl just before eating, which is an invitation to salmonella
poisoning.  If peacocks don't carry salmonella, I'm sure they have something
equally nasty.  Don't try this at home.

-- 
					Stephen Bloch
				     [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (david director friedman)
Date: Mon, 20 Jun 1994 03:20:54 GMT

On the subject of cooking peacocks ...  . Master Chiquart, chief cook
to the Duke of Savoy in the early fifteenth century and author of _Du
Fait de Cusine_, recommends skinning the peacock and putting the skin
on a roast goose. Apparently he did not think much of peacock as food.

David Friedman

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From: [email-masked] (Stephen Bloch)
Date: 20 Jun 1994 09:02:57 -0400

I ran into another 15th-century English peacock recipe.  It's quite similar,
but from a different source, widely referred to among medieval cookery
enthusiasts as "Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books", really based on
Harleian mss. 279 and 4010, Ashmole ms. 1429, Laud ms. 553, and Douce
ms. 55.  The following recipe I copied from John L. Anderson's edition,
printed in 1962 by Charles Scribner's Sons.  This book is perhaps the first
"modern medieval cookbook", antedating much of the medievalist movement;
its glossary is sometimes inaccurate and dated, and its illustrations pure
fantasy, but the recipes seem to be accurately copied from the original.

Pecok Rosted
Take a Pecok, breke his necke, and kutte his throte, And fle him, the skyn
and the ffethurs togidre, and the hede still to the skyn of the nekke.  And
kepe the skyn and the ffethurs hole togiders; drawe him as an hen, And kepe
the bone to the necke hole, and roste him, And set the bone of the necke
aboue the broche, And abowe the legges to the body, as he was wonte to
sitte a-lyve; And whan he is rosted ynowe, take him of, And lete him kele;
And then wynde the skyn with the fethurs and the taile abought the body,
And serue him forthe as he were a-live; or ellez pull him dry, And roste
him, and serue him as thou does a henne.

[I've transliterated the ME letter "thorn" as "th", and the ME letter
"yogh" as "z".  I've ignored a number of bars over n's, h's (following t),
and double l's.]

-- 
					Stephen Bloch
				     [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Robin Carroll-Mann)
Date: 20 Jun 1994 23:49:26 GMT

>on a roast goose. Apparently he did not think much of peacock as food.

In "The Best of a Watched Pot" volume 1, an anthology of material from a SCA
cooking newsletter, Elspeth Alyna of Alnwick relates how she and another
lady acquired a live peacock, with the intention of serving him up as the
centerpiece of a special feast.  She does not recount which medieval recipe
they worked from, but the peacock was stuffed with oranges and larded with
bacon before roasting, then served in its skin and feathers (wax-coated on
the inside to prevent contamination of the cooked bird). Those who sampled
the dish reported that "peacock was pretty but not tasty".

Robin Carroll-Mann
[email-masked]
Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom

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From: [email-masked] (Tom Brady)
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 1994 07:20:44 GMT-05

Heh. Peacocks. Oh lord, what memories...

A few years back, a member of our group who was running an event had his heart 
set on preparing a peacock in grand style to be served at high table. After 
successfully negotiating the task of obtaining said bird (peacock seller: "You 
want to use my peacocks for WHAT?"), we turned the bird over to our resident 
leather/crafty-type person (Mistress Rosatrude the Shrew) for killing and 
skinning. She tanned the skin (the feathers held on remarkably well) and 
turned the carcass over to our cooks. Well, when the cooks attempted to cook 
the thing, they made allowances for game birds requiring extra cooking time 
and planned things accordingly. What they forgot to take into account was the 
fact that it was a peaCOCK and not a peaHEN - should have been given a bit 
more time in the oven. The bird was wrapped in foil, and the tanned skin 
placed on it, and the bird was served to high table with all pomp. It looked 
splendid, but when the skin and foil was taken off, one of the peers gazed at 
it and mumbled something about poisoning the king with salmonella salad. 
Needless to say, the bird was hustled back to the kitchen and popped back into 
the oven. It finally was ready, and those who tasted it agreed that it sure 
looked good, but the flavor wasn't worth the effort. (Did you taste it, Terry? 
What did you think?)

>From "Tales of Ice Castles Past, A Look Back in Horror," by Duncan 
MacKinnon, Tobermory Press (c) A.S. 29 ;-)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Brady, P.O. Box 450, Blacksburg, VA 24063-0450   SCA: Duncan MacKinnon
"The cruelest lies are often told in silence." - Robert Louis Stevenson
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From: [email-masked] (Terry Nutter)
Date: 21 Jun 1994 20:05:28 GMT

Tom Brady insists on pulling skeletons out of the closet.

>set on preparing a peacock in grand style to be served at high table. 
{ snip }
>more time in the oven. 
{ snip }
>          It finally was ready, and those who tasted it agreed that it sure 

Actually, I don't think it _was_ sent back for more cooking, though since I
wasn't involved with the kitchen, I'm not sure.  My memory, from having been
told by someone who was seated where it was served, is that it was, well,
rubbery, and not eaten.

My suspicion is that the thing should have been boiled before being roasted.
My other suspicion (given what little I know about where Mark got the bird)
is that it was also too old.  Had I been the cook, I'd have told Mark, firmly
and calmly, that I don't cook things raised to be pets, and that I never
serve others anything that I have no chance to experiment with, making sure
that it is edible; and if he needed to break those rules, he needed a different
cook.  But he had a different cook (who didn't know he was using a pet-raised
bird, BTW), so it was moot.

Sigh.  The young are often foolish.

It cost a fortune, and it was a disaster from every angle.  I'm with David.
(And Chiquart.)  Use the peacock feathers, but serve a goose.

Cheers,

Terry Nutter     Blacksburg, VA     [email-masked]     (703)552-1598